Ethanol producted for $1.00/gallon?E-Fuel looks to keep consumers full of cheap gas.’ -
Ethanol is a rather controversial technology. While many automotive companies are heavily investing in developing ethanol production, releasing ethanol vehicles, and building up the ethanol infrastructure, the process has been much maligned by the United Nations and academia. The UN and various professors have released regular statements blasting the technology for threatening to raise food prices on basic food stocks such as corn. They say that this is already happening, and is causing an increase in famine worldwide.
Still, economics isn’t exactly a friendly sport at times, and one inventor, Floyd S. Butterfield, is putting his all into offering an ethanol homebrewer to consumers. Much like the auto companies, Mr. Butterfield is betting that despite the controversy, when customers see the low prices of ethanol fuel, they will jump to adopt it.
Butterfield, 52, has been making ethanol stills for years. In 1982 he won the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s award for the best still design. After many long years of work and investment, he believes he finally has developed an affordable, profitable, easy to use, and practical design.
He has partnered with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas J. Quinn and together the pair started the E-Fuel Corporation. Their new home-fuel ethanol system will be called the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler. It will be about the size of a washer-dryer stack and retail for $9,995. Orders should start shipping by the end of 2008. Tax credits could cut the cost in half approximately, for many consumers.
The still uses sugar as its fuel source. The company distributes a specially formulated yeast that processes this sugar, making it into ethanol. Based on the cost of sugar, and the water and electricity that must also be used, E-Fuel says that it may cost as little as $1 per gallon of fuel.
Quinn does some ethanol making of his own. He collects leftover waste alcohol from bars in Silicon Valley and converts it into ethanol. His only expense is in the electricity needed for processing. He states that ethanol will contribute less carbon pollution as well; burning one gallon of traditional gas releases as much carbon as eight gallons of their ethanol on average.
Quinn believes the oil industry is in trouble. He states, “It’s going to cause havoc in the market and cause great financial stress in the oil industry.”
Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley warns though that homebrewing isn’t always as easy as putting in a deck or other outdoor projects. Such setups are often plagued with low quality-control and worse efficiency than commercial production. He states, “There’s a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It’s entirely possible that they’ve done it, but skepticism is a virtue.”
However Quinn is no stranger to what it takes to succeed. He owns the patent on the motion sensor used in the wildly successful Nintendo Wii, the current console leader. He cut his teeth on the fledging PC market, as the product manager for Alan F. Shugart’s iconic hard drive company, which pioneered the sales of the technology. Mr. Quinn states, “I remember people laughing at us and saying what a stupid idea it was to do that disk drive.”
Butterfield considers the still as revolutionary as the personal computer in terms of societal impact. With the help of Mr. Quinn’s team of 15 microelectronics experts, the company cut the energy useage during the production process in half. One key element is a new membrane filter, which separates alcohol from water at lower heat and with less steps. As the process uses sugar, it will have no odor, and the water exiting will be drinkable.
E-Fuel plans to deploy at launch, not only to the U.S., but also to China and Britain. A commercial version of the still is in the works. Also Butterfield is working on versions of the still which use feedstocks other the sugar.
To own a homebrew system you must obtain a permit from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which is a relatively simple process. There are thousands of homebrews in operation across the U.S.
However, homebrewed ethanol is often not very practical. Michael E. Salassi, a professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University says it takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar typically to make a gallon of ethanol, and with sugar selling at 20 cents a pound or more, thats $2 to $2.80 a gallon, plus the cost of electricity and water used. Mr. Quinn counters these arguments, stating that starting next year the company will offer inedible sugar from Mexico at 2.5 cents a pound, which will be compatible with the system and lower the cost drastically. E-Fuel says its working to develop a distribution network for the sugar.
Yet there’s still one more complication: currently it is illegal to operate a 100 percent ethanol-fueled vehicle on road in the U.S. This may change soon, but for now customers will have to settle for using a mix of ethanol and gas.
WOW. Cheaper produced Ethanol may be 1 year away.
Holding on a little longer.......